Buying Time
by chai4anne
Summary: Josh gets a haircut that Donna hates.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: I first posted this on JDFF in November 2004, when Season 6 was in full swing. It's meant to be set in an imaginary Season 5, in which Zoe was never kidnapped and the Bartlet White House still had some of that cozy, familial feel I loved in the earlier seasons of the show. My take on Leo and Donna was probably colored by the way John Wells was writing them in S5 and S6, though.

My apologies to anyone who's read this before; I'm working on putting all my stories together on this site.

Part 1 of 6

Josh looked at his watch: 4:54. It wasn't his crap watch; it was the new one he'd bought just a few weeks before. It had cost quite a lot of money—more money than he'd ever spent, or even considered spending, on something he was planning to wear—but he'd liked the look of it, and it kept time well. If it said 4:54, then damn it, he could be sure it really was 4:54, not 4:27 or 5:15. There had been a certain rush of satisfaction in spending money on himself, and it pleased him to know the right time, for a change, gave him a comforting feeling of being in control of at least one small part of his life. The feeling, he knew, was entirely illusory, but these days he tried to seize on the small things to be happy about. There wasn't much else to go on.

He gathered some files together and pushed them into his backpack before standing up, stretching—God, he was stiff—and struggling into his coat. The muscles under his left arm objected vigorously; since no one was there to see he let himself grimace, then picked up the pack and walked out of the office. Donna was still in her cubicle, typing something. He paused by her desk and cleared his throat. She glanced up at him, but kept on typing.

"I'm heading out now."

"Out by five on a Saturday night again? What is the world coming to when Josh Lyman doesn't need to work around the clock seven days a week?"

"Yeah, well, we've all got to get a life sometime."

"Another hot date?"

"Same one."

"She must be really something."

"She is. She really is." He was trying to sound casual and amused; he thought he was bringing it off fairly well. He was getting better at this. Of course, he'd had quite a bit of practice by now.

"I'll be leaving soon too. Chris is picking me up."

"Which one is Chris?"

"The tall, blond, handsome one. With the great hair."

"What happened to the tall, dark, handsome one?"

"Jeff. Who also has great hair. He's taking me out tomorrow night."

"Donnatella Moss, are you dating two guys at once?"

"Three, actually. You're forgetting Jeremy, who's taking me out next week."

"Which one is Jeremy?"

"The tall, handsome redhead with the really great, curly hair."

"Great hair seems to be a theme these days."

"Hey, some people have it, some people don't. And then there's the third category."

"It's a hot look."

"Only for inmates in federal penitentiaries, or the genuinely hot. Those with great clothes and aesthetically pleasing heads."

Ouch. He was expecting that, but it still hurt.

"There's nothing wrong with my head. It works quite well."

"What's inside works all right, once in a while. The outside might too, if today was Halloween."

Double ouch. He should be used to this by now, but it still made his stomach clench and did something strange to his breathing. The only way to cover was with a smirk; he went for a big one.

"All the other women think it's cool."

"I thought you said it was hot?"

"That too."

"Ever think of adding an earring? Maybe a tattoo?"

"I'm working on it. Which ear do you think would be best?"

"Better ask your girlfriend. If she is a girlfriend. You're sure it's not a boyfriend? 'Cause what with the hair, and maybe an earring now, I'm beginning to—"

"Quite sure. Not a doubt in my mind. Not a doubt in any man's mind who looks at her. Not so sure about Chris, though; I've got to tell you, you might want to watch out for him—"

"You haven't even met him. Get out of here, Alcatraz man. It isn't cool to be late for a date."

"A hot date, very hot."

"Do you want me to come in tomorrow?"

"Nah, I'm out of here for the rest of the weekend. Have fun with Chris."

"And Jeff. And Jeremy."

"Them too. See you Monday."

Josh slung the backpack up on his right shoulder, gave her a grin, and moved away, trying for his best swagger. It wasn't until he was around the corner that he let himself relax into a normal walk. His shoulders slumped a little. The backpack felt heavier than usual; his back ached. He nodded to the guards at the front doors and stepped outside. At his car, he threw the backpack into the trunk, where it nestled up beside the suitbag already there. He did a mental check: sweatpants, a couple of t-shirts, change of underwear and socks. Toothbrush, toothpaste. Fresh shirt and tie for Monday morning. Files on the education bill, the Atwater appointment, alternative energy. He leaned back in the driver's seat, aware that he was stalling, and ran his fingers over his face and where his hair used to be. His scalp felt cold and strange. On impulse he pulled the rearview mirror down and made himself look in it. Yeah, he really did look like crap. Worse than crap. It was hard to bring off the hip thing when he was wearing a suit and tie, and when he was so tired, and when—let's face it—hip had just never been his thing to begin with. He flipped the mirror back up, closed his eyes, and sat for a minute, torturing himself a bit more by thinking about Donna and her dates. There'd been a time when he could have sabotaged any or all of them by making her work late, but he couldn't really bring that off when he wasn't staying himself. He stretched a bit, wincing as he caught his left arm the wrong way, opened his eyes again, and sat up. Started the car, fiddled with the radio, looked at his watch again. 5:20; he really had to go now. Sighing, he backed out of his space and headed off for another long Saturday night and Sunday with his really hot date.

oooooo

Donna sat at her desk, straightening a few papers and fretting about that last conversation with Josh. They'd been having a lot of those lately, and she didn't like them. Didn't like the meanness they brought out in her, didn't like the way the meanness didn't seem to affect him. And they were getting worse; the more untouched he seemed by what she said, the nastier she got. "The outside might work too, if today was Halloween"—that had been really over the top. Their conversations had always had an edge, but not like this. She wasn't sure what she might say next. It disturbed her.

She felt at sea, that was the trouble. Confusion always brought out the worst in her. She didn't like not knowing things; she liked to have her world organized so she knew what was happening and what to do about it. It was one of the qualities that made her such a successful assistant for Josh: his job involved constant chaos, but her job was to bring the chaos under control. Her filing, for instance: it didn't matter how many issues Josh was trying to juggle, she could handle them—and him—if she just had the right number of file folders. For research her trick was index cards. You could count on things like that; no matter how crazy life was getting around you, you could find your answers in the folders, the index cards, the carefully organized hierarchies of computer files.

But, ever since she'd started working for him, the most important constant in her life had always been Josh. It was strange, she knew, to think of him as predictable or constant. Most people who knew him would say he was mercurial, and he was—his moods shifted quickly and frequently, the way his hands moved, or his feet. He could be a laughing extrovert one minute-the life of the party, high off the energy of all the people and ideas buzzing around him—and crash down into himself the next. But there was always a reason for the shift, and she had caught on to his mood changes very quickly, early on in their relationship. It had been an almost instinctive thing; she had seemed to understand him, to know how he was going to react to anything that was going on. She made mistakes, of course—she wasn't clairvoyant—but she'd always been able to figure out why he had reacted in the way she hadn't predicted, and had felt confident that she'd get it right the next time. Which she usually did.

And then, this summer, the ground had shifted under her feet. It had been a seismic change; she couldn't think of it as anything less dramatic than that. One minute she and Josh had been going along in the usual way, with everything quite normal; the next minute a huge canyon seemed to have opened up between them, and the entire landscape of her life had altered. There hadn't even been a warning rumble from the ground.

It wasn't the fact that he'd got a girlfriend. At least, it wasn't simply that. He'd had them before: Mandy, Amy, and countless dates in between. They'd bothered her—Amy had bothered her a lot—but they hadn't created the same sense of disorientation that this new one did.

A big part of that was the fact that she'd never met this woman. Hadn't spoken with her on the phone. Didn't know her name. Didn't know what city she lived in, even, or what they did together. Sex, obviously, but what else? Usually Josh blabbed to her about everything—well, almost everything. That had driven her crazy, but not knowing was driving her crazier. She was supposed to know about his girlfriends, supposed to have met them; hell, half the time she was the one who helped get him the first date. Which was a little sick, she knew, but it had worked—sort of. But now everything was completely different.

One week Josh had been doing his usual thing: working late on Saturday night, Sundays sometimes, and making her work too. They'd eat take-out together, and afterwards he'd drag her out to some bar for drinks, sometimes with CJ or Toby or Will, sometimes just the two of them. Then, one Saturday in July, he'd told her she could go home early because he had to leave at 5:00, and he'd left work promptly every other Saturday night at 5:00 ever since. The next day had been just as strange; he hadn't even called her to bug her about work. He'd leave the office at 5:00 on Saturday night, and she wouldn't hear a peep from him until Monday morning. He must be serious about this woman to be spending that much time with her, that regularly. Donna had never seen him do anything like this before: not with Mandy, not with Amy, not with any of the lesser dates in between.

It must have started the long weekend in July. Josh had mentioned quite suddenly the week before that he was going to take a few days off. Naturally she'd asked him where he was going. He'd said he had some friends who had a place in the Hamptons. Donna had played that up for all it was worth, working on him, pretending to be pretending to fish for an invitation. (She'd have loved one, but she had to cover.) He'd said she'd cramp his style. That had to be where he'd met the woman, because the changes in their weekends had started not long after. Donna pictured them meeting at some swank party, laughing over the catered barbecue together, walking out across the causeway over the dunes afterwards, taking their shoes off, letting the waves splash around their ankles, kissing while the sun set—actually, none of that sounded like Josh at all, but then, neither was missing a chance to come into work on a Saturday night or Sunday. He hadn't looked, when he'd come back, as if he'd had a terrific weekend falling in love on a beach—in fact, he'd looked sick—but there must have been some time for fun before he came down with whatever bug he'd picked up on the trip. He'd certainly sounded pleased with himself when she'd grilled him about it; his smirk had been out in full force. She wondered if the woman was from New York, or somewhere else. If she lived in D.C., Donna thought she'd have come into the office by now; no woman who didn't work there could resist a visit to the White House. And Donna was sure it wasn't anyone who worked there. So she must be from somewhere else, probably Manhattan. She wondered if he was taking Amtrak up to New York every other Saturday night, staying over, coming back late Sunday, maybe even staying Sunday night and taking the Metroliner in early Monday morning, which would explain how tired he always looked on Mondays. She'd looked up time-tables, picturing him driving home, picking up his things, taking a cab to Union Station in time to catch the 6:20 train. She felt like she was spying on him, and she hated herself for doing it, but she couldn't seem to stop.

And of course she tried to picture the woman. She must be really something to have hooked Josh so quickly and so completely. Donna had pictured every possible style of girl—sometimes petite, sometimes tall; sometimes curvy, sometimes thin; sometimes with dark hair, sometimes blonde-but always beautiful, because Josh had been bowled over; always wildly intelligent, for the same reason; always rich (what other kind of woman would you meet in the Hamptons?). After the haircut, she'd added some other adjectives: young, hip, and tasteless.

The tasteless part was what really bothered Donna. Here was this woman who'd met Josh Lyman at a house party, had attracted him, hooked him—hell, made him fall in love with her, by the looks of it—and then changed him. For the worse. Donna didn't consider herself an idiot; she would be the first to say that Josh Lyman could use some change. But trying to make him look more hip really wouldn't have been anywhere near her own list of places to begin. It wasn't his style—although, when he was sporting his sunglasses and his swagger, he could fool you into thinking it might be. Maybe that was what had gone wrong in Southampton: he must have worn his sunglasses and his swagger. Of course he had; it was the Fourth of July, there was a beach, it was the Hamptons. Of course he had. And this idiot woman had decided he was cute enough to be interesting, but not cute enough to be preserved intact. She'd gone after his hair. And that really killed Donna, because, although she would have died before she'd admit it to Josh, she loved his hair. She loved how thick and wavy it was. She loved the way it turned auburn in the sunlight. She loved the ridiculous birds'-nest way it stood up when it was a little too long and he'd been running his fingers through it. She even (God, she was a hopeless case) loved the way it was receding in front. He was a bit self-conscious about that and she knew it, which made him a little vulnerable, a little sweet, and made her feel protective. She knew a lot of guys chose to shave their heads now, rather than cope with the runway-between-two-strips-of-grass look, but Josh hadn't been anywhere remotely close to needing to do that yet. Toby, maybe; not Josh. And, apart from that touch of self-consciousness about the hairline, he'd never really paid any attention to his hair at all; in fact, he tended to neglect it, to let too much time go by between haircuts, which was how it ended up doing that birds'-nest thing. But then he'd gone to the Hamptons for the Fourth of July, and three weeks later he'd walked into the office with a buzz cut, and a couple of weeks after that he'd shaved it clean. Ugh. She still couldn't stand to think about it.

And so she dealt with it the only way she ever dealt with personal things with Josh: she razzed him about it. Hard. And then a little harder. And then a little harder still. It was the way they did things, the way they always had. He reacted just the way he always did, with a smirk and a swagger, as if nothing she said could get through that inflated ego at all. But this time it bothered her more than usual. She wondered why she'd ever thought he was vulnerable, why she'd ever bothered to feel protective of him. Why she'd ever thought she knew him. And that made her feel, not just sad, but lost, as if everything she'd ever been sure of in her life had been taken away from her in a swoop. So she lashed out by thinking of newer and still meaner things to say to him, but saying them wasn't making her feel any better at all.

ooooooo


	2. Chapter 2

Part 2 of 6

Josh leaned his head against the high back of the sofa in Leo's office, and tried to concentrate on what everyone was saying. They were talking about the Atwater appointment; Toby and C.J. were weighing in with various angles that the press might take on it, talking about Atwater's vulnerabilities, how to spin them. He had the polling numbers ready, but Leo hadn't asked him for them yet. The dull headache he'd had all day was starting to crank up the volume. He closed his eyes for a moment, just a moment. . .

"Josh? JOSH?" Josh startled, blinked his eyes, sat up. "Do you think you could give us the benefit of your attention for a few minutes, Josh? Or is that too much to ask? I've asked you for that polling data three times now!"

"Sorry, Leo, I've got it right here—"

"Is it just my voice, Josh, or is it the job that you find boring?"

"Sorry, Leo, what—"

"Because this is the third time you've fallen asleep in a staff meeting in the past two weeks, and I have to tell you, I'm not finding it funny any more!"

"I've got those numbers right here, Leo."

"You're sure we can trust them? You didn't just nod off for a bit while you were working on them, did you?"

"I'm sorry, Leo. I just—"

"And you weren't too busy screwing around with your new girlfriend to do the job properly, Josh?"

"Leo!—"

"You'd better start rethinking your priorities, Josh. I've been hearing about your little trips away on the weekends. There's no harm in taking some time off now and again, but you're burning the candle at both ends and it's starting to show. Your personal life is your own business, but when it affects your performance on the job, it becomes mine. And I've had about as much of this as I'm planning to take."

"I said I'm sorry, Leo. It won't happen again. Do you want those numbers now?"

Leo gave him a long look, then nodded. C.J. and Toby glanced at each other before looking carefully away; Leo usually waited until he was alone with someone before raking him over the coals. Josh started to talk about the polling data from the notes he'd brought with him, sitting hunched forward, his voice quiet, never lifting his eyes from the papers in his lap.

oooooo

"Joshua?"

"Yeah, C.J.?"

"You okay?"

"Yeah, C.J."

"Leo was pretty pissed in there."

"No kidding."

"And you're okay about it?"

"Yeah, sure, he'll get over it. It's not going to happen again."

"You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, of course I am; why wouldn't I be?"

"Well, you're not looking so great."

"You channelling Donna now? Just what I need, two female fashion-policeniks on at me about my hair. You'd think you'd both have better things to think about."

"I don't mean your haircut, you idiot! Just—you look kind of peaked."

"Peaked? What the hell is peaked?"

"Just—you know, kind of pale and tired and—peaked."

"You're starting to sound like a Victorian novelist, C.J. That one who wrote 'Little Women.'"

"Louisa May Alcott?"

"I think so."

"You've read 'Little Women'?"

"My sister used to make me listen while she read it out loud."

"I liked 'Little Men' better."

"Me too."

"Honestly, you think I sound like Louisa May Alcott? If I work at it, do you think I could become a classic author? Maybe make the Great Books list at Columbia or Freshman Lit at Yale?"

"Keep the day job."

"I'll think about it. But look, Josh—"

"Yeah?"

"Try to get more sleep."

"I'm working on it, C.J. I'd stand a better chance if I could get some of this work done now."

"Right. I'm outta here."

"Good."

"Josh."

"YES?"

"She's really that hot?"

"Hotter."

"Okay, mi amore. Glad you're having fun."

"Thanks. Now could you get out of here and let me get some work done?"

oooooo

"I've been checking out tattoo parlors."

"You have? Do I get to see? I hope it's in an indiscreet place."

"Wipe that smirk off your face, Joshua. The information is for you. You definitely need a tattoo to go with that haircut."

"Donna—"

"Don't whine. Your girlfriend will like it. It's an essential part of the look."

"I'm not getting a tattoo."

"You should think about it. I hear it's quite painful, but that's part of the allure."

"It is?"

"Yes. It demonstrates to anyone who sees it that you are a man with machismo. And let's face it; you're starting to need some reinforcement in that area."

"I am not!"

"Yes, you are. You haven't been eating the sandwiches I get you at lunch; you haven't been to the gym in ages; you're getting skinny and losing muscle tone. You're starting to look like a dweeb."

"A dweeb!"

"A dweeb. A wimp, a policy wonk, a nerd, a wuss."

"I am a master politician, and a really hot guy. If you don't believe me, just ask my fans on my website."

"The Lyman Hos? A bunch of desperate teenagers. I'm going to start calling them the Hopeless Hos. But even they'd probably be more turned on if you got a tattoo."

"I am NOT getting a tattoo!"

"Your girlfriend would like it, too. You could have her name in Celtic letters; that would look good. It might make her think you had machismo."

"She's perfectly satisfied with my masculinity, thank you very much."

"Try it—it could work wonders. And I've got some information here on body piercing . . ."

oooooo

It had been another long day. Josh forced himself up the steps to the door of his townhouse and fumbled with the key. He had to try three times to get it in the lock; the headache had turned to a pounding migraine, and dancing spots before his eyes were making it hard to focus on anything. Inside, he dropped his backpack by the door, pulled off his tie, and collapsed onto the couch.

When he woke up, the room was dark. The migraine had subsided, but it was still lurking just behind his eyes, waiting to make a comeback. He knew he needed to eat something; you couldn't expect to go all day without any food at all. The thought of eating made him feel nauseous, but he dragged himself to his feet and into the kitchen. There were a couple of slices of pizza in the fridge. Knowing he shouldn't, he grabbed a bottle of beer to go with them, and took the food back to the living room, where he plopped it on the coffeetable. Then he padded over to his desk, unlocked the top drawer, and took out a paper bag. Carried it to the couch, sat down, and emptied it onto the coffeetable. Flattened out one of the little papers. Opened one of the plastic packages, and dumped the contents onto the paper. Rolled it together, pinched it, put it in his mouth. Flicked a match, took a long drag. Leaning back against the cushions, Joshua Lyman, Deputy Chief of Staff to the President of the United States, closed his eyes and smoked a joint.

oooooo


	3. Chapter 3

Part 3 of 6

"You're late, Josh."

"Yeah. Sorry."

"Really late."

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that."

"It's not the first time."

"No, I know. I'm sorry. There's just a lot on at work right now."

The woman he was talking to looked at him appraisingly. She was about his age, possibly a year or two older, and strikingly attractive, with alluring curves and long, shiny hair looped back in a soft tail.

"Josh, you're working too hard. You need to take some time off."

"Not going to happen."

"You need to. You're tired out. You're not getting enough rest."

"I'm managing."

"And you're getting awfully thin. Are you eating at all?"

"Some. Enough."

"Mmm hmm. How's the grass?"

"It's pretty good stuff."

"Yeah, I provide best quality only. How's your stash holding out?"

"Getting low. I could use some more."

"Okay. I'll take care of that. Is everything else all right? You seem kind of down."

"I'm fine. Let's just get on with this, shall we?"

She gave him another long look, then said, "All right, then. Let's get those clothes off, and we'll start the fun."

oooooo

"I've changed my mind about your tattoo."

"Well, that's a relief."

"I don't think it should be your girlfriend's name in Celtic letters any more."

"It was never going to be."

"I've been giving it a lot of thought. It's important to make the right decision about these things; after all, if it's going to be a permanent part of you, it should be something you can live with forever."

"Donna—"

"Something personal, something that evokes your deepest sense of identity, something that says you, and only you—"

"Donna—"

"I was thinking, something that summed up your professional and personal lives in one striking image—"

"I'm sure you've got it all planned out, Donna, but—"

"A donkey. An ass! A jackass!"

"Thanks, Donna. Could you get Mitchell for me on the phone now? I've got to talk to him about the education thing."

"Sure. Just keep it in mind."

"Yeah, right. Like I don't have enough other stuff to think about."

oooooo

"Josh?'

"Yeah, Toby?"

"You okay?"

"Yeah, sure, I'm fine."

"Sure you are. That's why you're sitting on the bathroom floor with your head against the wall; it's what you always do when you're fine."

"I've just got a touch of flu."

"That's what you said last time."

"It's hanging on."

"And a couple of weeks before that."

"Yeah, well, some of these bugs can be a bitch."

"Other stuff can be a bitch too."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

"Want to tell me about it?"

"Not really."

"Then I think I'm going to tell you about it."

oooooo

"Josh, you haven't eaten your sandwich."

"I'll get to it later."

"It's after 4:00 already."

"Later."

"You said that yesterday, and it was still sitting here on your desk at 9:00 p.m. The bread was starting to curl around the edges. I had to throw it out."

"Sorry. I got busy."

"You're not too busy to eat now."

"I am actually quite busy now. Or I would be if you'd go away and let me get on with what I'm supposed to be busy with."

"Can't you eat and work at the same time?"

"Damn it, Donna, could you just leave me alone? I'm busy."

"Josh, you need to eat lunch. It's important to eat balanced meals three times a day. You're starving yourself. If that's what your girlfriend wants, she's got lousy taste. You look like an anorexic teenage girl. A bald anorexic teenage girl. You look gay."

"I'm not gay, damn it!"

"You sure? Cause you're really starting to look it."

"I've just lost a little weight, okay?"

"Way too much weight."

"It's a look."

"A really shitty look. Especially with the hair."

"The hair is a hot look."

"Not a chance. Not on you, girlie guy."

"I'm a hot guy. Now could you—"

"Yeah, sure, if an inmate in a concentration camp is your idea of ho—" Donna gasped, and brought her hand up to her mouth. "I'm sorry, Josh. I can't believe I said that. I can't believe I even thought that. I didn't, really, I mean I didn't consciously think it at all, I have no idea where those words came from . . ." Her voice trailed off. "I'm so sorry."

He'd pushed himself out of his seat and was staring at her, his face white, his expression completely unreadable. "Oh, don't worry about it, Donna. Don't think twice about it; just say any damn thing to me you want. I think I'll go now and get that tattoo you keep harping on about; I've finally figured out what it should be. I still remember my grandfather's number." He grabbed his coat and pushed past her out of the door.

"Josh!" Donna stumbled and almost fell as she ran after him. "JOSH! Wait, please wait. I mean it, I'm sorry, I really am, I'm so incredibly sorry . . ."

He turned around. His face was still white, but there were two red spots on it now, high up on his cheekbones. "Oh, screw it, Donna. You're a damn good assistant; no one's going to fire you. Why don't you just do your job and quit pretending to be my friend?" Then he turned again and walked away very fast. Donna stared after him, her hand over her mouth, the tears starting to pool in her eyes.

oooooo

Josh was almost running by the time he got to his car. He threw his coat onto the passenger's seat and dropped behind the wheel, crashing the door shut behind him. His left arm screamed in protest, but he ignored it. The gears ground a little when he jerked the shift into reverse and slammed his foot down on the gas. His embarrassment at that was offset by a certain childish pleasure in screeching the tires as he swung hard out of his parking space, then screeching them again as he shifted up and jammed his foot down on the accelerator. He could see the parking-lot guard staring after him. Of course he had to hit the brake almost immediately to avoid killing several pedestrians crossing the lot's entrance, and traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue forced him to slow to a bug-like crawl. By the time he got to Wisconsin and M he was fuming. Instead of turning on his usual route north, he accelerated through the intersection and along the next couple of blocks of M Street, then made an abrupt turn onto KeyBridge. Two minutes later he was in Virginia on the George Washington Parkway, doing 80 and pushing the car for more.

oooooo

Donna sat at her desk, her head buried in her arms. She tried to think what to do, but nothing came to her except the thought, over and over again, that there was nothing she could do. She couldn't make this right; she didn't know how. She had pushed Josh way too far; he'd never been that angry with her before. She didn't think she'd ever seen him that angry about anything before. And there was something else that was worse than the anger: he'd been hurt, she could see that. Really hurt. She supposed that must have been what she'd wanted all along; why else had she been riding him like that, if not to get under his skin, to provoke a reaction? Only, having gotten what she'd wanted, she'd give anything now to be able to take it back.

oooooo

The needle on the speedometer edged up as Josh pushed his foot closer to the floor, liking the speed and getting a perverse satisfaction out of knowing he was driving dangerously. There wasn't much traffic, but it had started to rain a little, and the pavement was slick with wet leaves. Thick stands of yellowing trees on either side cut the Parkway off from the rest of the city, giving Josh an eerie sense of moving through an entirely different plane of existence than the one on which he lived his daily life. From time to time he could glimpse the river, narrow here and dark, its waters running swiftly back the way he had come. He passed the CIA campus, snorting as he always did at the sign that announced it to be the GeorgeBushCenter for Intelligence, and forcing a little more out of the engine, just to make a point. At the end of the Parkway he eased up on the gas a little, swung onto the Beltway, and then off again onto the Georgetown Pike, still following the river. Now he had no choice but to slow down, though he still took the twists and hairpin turns in the narrow old road far faster than he should. The trees hung down low over the car here, cutting it off from what light was left in the grey late afternoon. Josh switched on his lights. A few minutes later he saw a sign for Great Falls, and, twisting the wheel, turned to the right a little too fast. The car skidded on some wet leaves and fishtailed, forcing him to let up on the gas. Travelling at a more reasonable pace he turned again at the next sign, and bumped down the little road into the park.

At that hour on a Saturday in October the parking lot was chained and deserted; the staff at the visitors' center had gone home long ago. Josh parked the car on the grassy verge just before the entrance to the lot, then climbed stiffly out, shrugged into his coat, stepped over the rusty chain, and walked down one of the paths leading towards the water just above the falls. At the end of the path he leaned on the railings for a few minutes, listening to the noise from the falls and watching a bit of mist rising over the edge of the drop in the dim evening light. Then, ignoring the warning signs that seemed to be posted everywhere, he ducked under the railings and scrambled down over the big rocks until he was right at the water's edge. The river seemed to be running very fast, dashing over the rapids and swirling back in eddies and whirlpools near the rock he was standing on. The roar of the water throwing itself over the drop seemed louder out here, and spray from the falls blew back up the river and mixed with the light rain, wetting his face and clothes and making him shiver in the chilly October evening. Not quite sure why he was doing it, Josh pulled his coat off, grunting with the pain from his shoulder, dropped it open on the rock, and lay down, stretching himself out on his stomach, his head cradled on his arms. The light faded and the rain grew heavier and colder, but he stayed that way for a long time, watching the dark water racing by at eye level in its rush to the rocky edge, his head filled with the thunder of its deadly plunge over the falls.

oooooo


	4. Chapter 4

Part 4 of 6

"You're late again, Josh."

"Yeah."

"Very late."

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Something came up."

"You're also wet. Very wet. Soaked to the skin, in fact."

"Yeah."

"And you're shivering. You've gotten pretty thoroughly chilled, I'd say."

"I guess."

There was a pause, while they looked at each other.

"Well, do you want to go get a hot shower and get warmed up before we start the fun stuff?"

"Actually, Marilyn, I just came by . . . I just wanted to say . . . I really appreciate what you've been trying to do for me, especially the way you've been willing to juggle things to fit my crazy schedule, and put up with my being late all the time and everything, but . . ."

"But what, Josh?"

"I don't want to do this any more."

"Josh!"

"I mean it. I've decided. I'm not doing this any more. I just don't want to."

"Josh, you can't be serious."

"I am."

"Josh! You can't be. You can't do this, you can't just quit on me now. You know how important this is!"

"It really isn't."

"What did you say?"

"I said it really isn't. It doesn't matter any more. Not to me."

"You're the person it should matter most to."

"It doesn't. It really just doesn't."

oooooo

"Toby?"

It was a couple of hours later. Donna had spent them sitting at her desk, trying to think what to do. She hadn't had any good ideas. She'd cried herself out, her head was pounding, and she had finally decided to go home. The West Wing was almost deserted; she'd been surprised to see Toby still at his desk, writing. He was the last person she wanted to talk to, which was why she thought he might be the best; C.J. would be too easy, even if she were still around, which she wasn't. Donna had walked past his door, turned and come back, then walked away again. And turned. And come back again. Then stood there just out of his sight for several minutes, before knocking hesitantly and saying his name.

"Donna?" He looked up, surprised. "What are you still doing here? I thought Josh left hours ago."

"He did. I—I just stayed. Could I—could I talk to you?"

Toby blinked, surprised. She looked, he realized, as if she had been crying. He shifted a little, awkwardly, in his chair, but in spite of his discomfort with emotion he wasn't a man to dodge difficult scenes. "Of course, Donna. Sit down. What is it?"

She sat down in his visitor's chair, her back very straight and stiff, her knees pressed together, her hands twisting nervously in her lap. She reminded Toby of a schoolgirl who had been sent to talk to the principal.

"I've done something awful, and I thought—I hoped—I wanted to ask you if—if you thought—what I should do—if there's anything I can do—to make it better . . ."

Toby stared at her. "Donna? What are you talking about?"

She swallowed, and dropped her head to look at her hands, still twisting in her lap. Her hair hung down and hid her face. "I said something to Josh. Something terrible, awful, unforgivable. And he's so angry with me, he won't let me tell him I'm sorry. He said . . . he said . . . he thought I was just trying to apologize to keep my job. He said I didn't have to worry about that, no one was going to fire me. He said I should just do my job and stop . . . stop. . ."

"Stop what, Donna?"

"Stop trying to pretend . . ."

She choked a little. Toby waited a few moments, then prompted her again: "Pretend what, Donna?"

"Stop trying to pretend . . . to be . . . his friend."

Toby leaned back in his chair, his eyebrows almost disappearing into his all-but-nonexistent hairline. He couldn't even begin to imagine what Donna could have said to have gotten that reaction from Josh.

"What did you say to him, exactly?"

"I said—oh, God, I can't tell you, Toby, you'll hate me too. It was unforgivable."

"Donna?"

"Yes?"

"If you want me to tell you what to do, I need to know what you said."

"You'll hate me." Her face was buried in her hands now, her voice muffled.

"I doubt it, Donna. I don't imagine Josh hates you, either, no matter what you've said to him."

"You don't know what I said."

"Tell me."

"I said . . . I said . . . I said he looked like an inmate in a concentration camp."

Toby sucked in his breath, and looked down at his own hands. He waited for a minute, trying to collect himself, not wanting to speak in anger, not wanting to say the wrong thing.

"I see. Why did you say that?"

"I don't know."

"You must have some idea."

"I really hate his haircut."

Toby gave a snort of laughter; he couldn't help himself.

"That's it?"

"Yes. No. I don't know, I don't—we've been going on about it for weeks. I've said a lot of things about it, mean things, he's never cared. Of course, they weren't as bad as that . . ."

"How do you know he didn't care?"

"I—he'd just smirk at me, and say something about it being a hot look for a hot guy. Or about his new girlfriend liking it. I don't know, it just bugged me."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Maybe because he seems so different. Changed. This summer, it happened almost over night. One minute everything was normal; we were working all day Saturdays, sometimes Sundays; he was dragging me out to dinner Saturday night or Sunday night to make up for making me lose my weekend, or making me come along when he was going out with you and CJ. You know, the way we always do. Normal. And then he went to the Hamptons in July, the long weekend, and met this girl, and suddenly he's going up there every other Saturday night and he's there all day Sundays then too. And even when he's here it's different; he doesn't want to do anything together any more. I don't—I'm not saying I mind, of course; it's great to have some time off for a change, and if he's happy, that's good. Right? But it's so strange. He's had girlfriends before, and he's never acted like this about them. And it's great that he's crazy about her, it should be great, but he's never told me her name, or anything about her; I've never met her. And normally he would have told me a lot stuff about her, about where they went to dinner, what movie they saw, stuff like that; he always has before. And the hair! He says it's hip; when did Josh ever want to look hip? It doesn't, anyway, it looks awful. She's got him losing weight, too; I can't imagine why. I don't get it, I don't know what's happening, I feel like I don't even know Josh any more. And that bothers me. A lot. So when we're talking, it's like I'm digging at him, trying to get some sort of response, and nothing I say seems to matter to him at all. So then I dig harder, and say something meaner, and it still doesn't matter. Didn't matter, I mean. Until tonight. And then all of a sudden—And I know what I said tonight was awful, I know that, but—"

"But what?"

"Some of the other things I've said have been pretty awful, too." Her voice was almost a whisper.

Toby didn't say anything for a while. He sat with his head bent over, chewing on the end of his pencil, then taking it out of his mouth and twirling it in his fingers before putting it back between his teeth and chewing on it again. Donna sat quietly, sniffling a little, still looking down at her hands.

"Donna," Toby said at last.

"Yes, Toby?"

"This isn't really my territory, you know. I'm not very good at this sort of thing. But,"—his voice got a bit gruff—"I do care about Josh. And," getting even gruffer—"I care about you, too. You seem to have gotten yourselves into something you both need to get out of. Or, rather, that you need to get both of you out of, because I don't really think Josh is going to be able to do that himself at this point."

Donna nodded. She was looking at Toby now, expectantly. He continued to play with his pencil.

"To do that, I think you're going to need some information I'm not sure you have right now. I don't really think I should be the one to give you that information. But I don't know how the hell else you're going to get it, and if you don't have it, you'll just make things worse. For Josh. For you."

It was Donna's turn to look surprised. "What do you mean, Toby? What kind of information?"

Toby hunched his shoulders, and cleared his throat. "It's obvious from what you say happened tonight that you've upset Josh. You know that. You just don't understand it."

"I do understand, Toby. I know what a terrible thing that was for me to say—to anyone, but especially to Josh. I know about his family, about his grandfather, I know how he feels about it. I wasn't thinking—I didn't mean to make him think of that, but I understand why it upset him."

"I wasn't referring to what you said tonight, Donna. Yes, it was a—bad thing to say, but you know that. And it won't have been the worst thing he's ever heard, either. Just—"

"Just what, Toby?"

"Just maybe the worst thing he's heard from you, Donna. You're wrong if you think that what you say to him doesn't matter to Josh. You've probably been saying a lot of things that have got to him; he just hasn't let on before. Sam always said Josh has a terrible poker face, but he's actually very good at covering himself when he wants to. He wouldn't be able to do his job if he couldn't."

"I know that, of course. It's just—I can usually tell when he's doing it."

"I don't think you're really quite as good at reading Josh as you think you are, Donna. For instance, I'm not sure you realize—" Toby broke off suddenly, and put his pencil in his mouth again.

"Realize what?"

Toby chewed on the pencil for a while, then took it out of his mouth and rubbed it between his hands. He took a deep breath, and blew it out slowly. "Damn," he said. "I really wish I hadn't gotten into this."

"Please, Toby. If there's something I need to know so I can make things better with Josh, I need to know it! Please, Toby, tell me. I don't want him to be this angry; I don't want him to be so upset. I can't stand for him to be upset."

Toby looked up at her for a minute, studying her face, then gave an almost-imperceptible nod. He took another deep breath, and said, "I'm not sure you realize that Josh is in love with you."

Donna almost fell off her chair.

"WHAT?" she squeaked.

Toby looked at her helplessly. "You heard me, Donna."

"Since WHEN? Whatever gave you THAT idea?"

"Since forever, Donna. Since probably the day he hired you."

"You're crazy."

"No, I'm not, Donna. It's not exactly a secret; I know it, Sam knows it, C.J. knows it, Leo knows it, I daresay the President and Mrs. Bartlet know it. Charlie and Zoe and Danny Concannon know it. You don't know it, because he does his damnedest not to let you see it, and because you—" Toby broke off that thought abruptly. "But he's made himself abundantly obvious to everyone else."

Donna was stunned. "You mean, he's actually said—?"

"No. At least, not to me, and not to anyone, as far as I know. He doesn't need to. It's been apparent, in the way he looks at you when you're not watching, the way he talks about you, the ridiculous lengths he'll go to to spend time with you, or to keep you from spending time with anyone else."

"He's never said anything to me at all."

"I know that. He wouldn't."

"Why?" Her voice was very small, and trembled a little.

"He can't, Donna. You must be able to see that. You work for him; he's your boss. There are rules about things like that, and this is the White House. It's one of Josh's many jobs to make sure those rules are followed here. Even if it wasn't, I can't see him putting you in that position."

"What position?"

"Being pressured to have sex with your boss, Donna; what the hell do you think I mean?"

"Oh." There was a very long pause. Toby went back to chewing on his pencil, then took it out of his mouth again, and said, "So you see, what you say really does matter to Josh, whether he shows it or not. I imagine especially comments about the way you think he looks."

"Oh." She bit her lip, and blinked back the tears that were starting to pool in her eyes. Then something occurred to her. "But you can't be right about this, Toby. What about his girlfriend? He's really serious about her; he has to be, to be spending all this time with her. You know that's something new for him; he never did that with Mandy or Amy or anyone else. And she gave him a watch, a few weeks ago, a really expensive watch, so she must be serious about him, too."

There was another long pause. Then Toby took a breath, and said, "There isn't any girlfriend, Donna."

"What?"

"Josh doesn't have a girlfriend."

"He does; I told you—"

"He doesn't. That's not why he's taking time off work on the weekends."

"It's not?"

"No, it's not."

"How do you know?"

Toby shrugged. "I know."

Donna looked at him suspiciously. She'd thought a lot about that girlfriend; she wasn't going to disbelieve in her as readily as that.

"Why is he doing it, then?"

Toby looked back at her for a minute, then dropped his eyes and stared at his hands. Donna held her breath; there was something in his face that she couldn't quite identify, but it made her feel almost sick with tension. "Why, Toby?" Toby kept looking down at his hands and his pencil, wishing he could just stick it in his mouth and never have to say anything again. He couldn't, though, and he knew Josh needed help, even if he would never admit it. He took a very deep breath, looked her in the face, and said, "He's sick, Donna. He has cancer. He goes to the hospital every other weekend for treatment. For chemotherapy."

oooooo

"I—no, no. He can't have. Not Josh. Not Josh. Not again. No, please, no, no."

Donna wrapped her arms around herself and was rocking back and forth in her chair. Toby got up and went over to her, dropping his arm around her shoulders briefly in an awkward hug. "I'm sorry, Donna, but yes, he does."

It was a minute before she was able to say anything else. Then, her voice breaking, she asked, "What kind?"

"Lymphoma."

"Did he have surgery?"

"In July, I think. The long weekend."

The long weekend. Of course. "Why—why didn't he tell me?"

"He didn't tell anyone, Donna."

"He told you."

"No. I guessed. Not that long ago. He made me promise not to tell anyone."

"You've broken that promise."

"Yes, I have."

"How did you guess?"

"I'm a man, Donna; I use the men's room. I kept finding him there, puking his guts out. The stomach flu story only worked so long. And then the fact that he was away from this place regularly every second weekend, the fact that he's so tired he keeps falling asleep in meetings, his hair—"

"His hair—it didn't fall out, Toby; he just cut it."

"I think it was preemptive."

"I didn't know. I didn't know. I knew he was tired; I could see that. I knew he wasn't eating much. I thought—I didn't know he's been falling asleep in meetings; I didn't know he was being sick."

"He didn't want you to know, Donna."

("Josh?"

"Yeah, Toby?"

"You need to tell Leo."

"No thanks."

"And the President."

"No way."

"And Donna."

"Absolutely not.")

"Why, Toby? Why wouldn't he tell me? I should have known; I could have helped him; I wouldn't have-"

("They need to know, Josh. You're not going to be able to sit on this much longer. They're going to be upset when they find out."

"That's why I'm not telling them.")

"He said he didn't want anyone to worry, Donna."

"Why not?"

("They're going to be more upset when they find out and you haven't told them. And they're going to find out, Josh. They're actually quite intelligent people, though you may have a hard time wrapping your Ivy-educated brain around the idea that the word applies to anyone but you.")

"Because he cares about us, Donna. Because he cares about you. Though I think—"

"Think what? What do you think?"

("God damn it, Toby, what do you think you—I mean, damn it, it's my life, isn't it? I'll tell who I want, what I want, when I want, and if I don't feel like telling anyone at all, why the hell should I?"

"So they can help you."

"I don't want their frigging help, Toby! Damn it, can't you see? I don't want anyone pussy-footing around me, being nice just because—If I'm fucking up, I want Leo to tell me I'm fucking up. If I look like shit, I want Donna to say I look like shit. I can't take lies from them, Toby, I just can't.")

"I think he also didn't want our sympathy. He didn't want us being nice to him just because we felt sorry for him."

"But we love him. Everyone loves him."

"And I think I'm not sure Josh really knows that."

oooooo

"Josh?"

"Yeah, Marilyn?"

"I know these treatments can be pretty hard to face. It might help if you brought someone with you, a friend. Someone to talk with, maybe play cards or Scrabble with, help you relax."

"No, thanks."

"Why not, Josh? It's a good idea; a lot of people find it helpful. It helps them remember why they're here, keeps them focused on the goal—getting better."

"I said, no thanks."

"Why not, Josh?" A long pause. "Why not?"

When he finally answers, his voice rasps. "There isn't anyone. There isn't anyone to ask."

oooooo

"Donna?"

"Yes?" She was still wiping her face, sniffling a little.

"Don't let him know you know."

Donna thought about that for a minute. "But he needs us; he needs his friends; he needs-"

"He does, but not like that. This is what he's said he wants; we need to respect that."

"WHY? Whyis this what he wants? When he was shot-"

"That was completely different, Donna."

"Why?"

"Because he didn't have a choice then. By the time he was conscious, we all knew about it—the whole world knew about it. You know how comfortable he was with that, how much he hated being fussed over. He needs his privacy, Donna. He needs to try to keep—his dignity. That's something I respect."

Donna knew Toby was right. She often forced issues with Josh, but there wasn't anything to be gained by doing that here, now, except a little peace of mind, a little comfort for her. Which wasn't worth sacrificing any comfort Josh might be holding onto right now.

"Toby?"

"Yeah?"

"Is he in a lot of pain?"

"I don't really know, Donna. It's one of those questions I didn't feel I could ask."

"Toby?"

"Yes, Donna?"

"He—he is going to be all right, isn't he? They can cure this, can't they?"

"I hope so, Donna. I really hope so."

oooooo

After Donna left Toby she went back and let herself into Josh's office. She curled up in his chair and thought about him sitting there, day after day, all summer, all fall, knowing that he was sick. Very sick. Knowing that he might—she couldn't bring herself to think the words. She wanted to remember everything she could of what he had said and done and how he had looked when he was saying it and doing it, so she could re-imagine what had been happening to him, so she could understand. She still couldn't believe she could have misunderstood so much.

She wondered when he'd found out. It must have been near the end of June. She tried to think what they had been doing then. Not a lot; Congress had broken for the summer, there had been no bills to ram through. They'd spent time finishing off small projects, tying up loose ends. There had been plenty of time for Josh to go to doctor's appointments without her knowing about it. And there must have been lots of appointments, she thought. The first one, a regular check-up—yes, she remembered now, she'd had to nag him about going for it; he'd put it off several times earlier in the season, when they'd been busy. The doctor would have found something he didn't like, a lump somewhere, some soreness; or maybe Josh had been having symptoms—he'd had some sort of flu in the spring that had dragged on a long time. The doctor would have ordered tests, a biopsy. She tried to imagine what Josh might have felt at being told he might, there was just a possibility he might, have cancer. She thought probably he would have pushed the information to the back of his mind, refusing to give it any further thought until he had to, telling himself that the tests would come back negative. She tried to imagine what it must have been like when he was told they hadn't.

It hurt her, physically, to think of him having to deal with that by himself, alone. She didn't think any of it had showed in his face, in his voice, at work; she couldn't remember anything that even hinted at the fact that his world had turned upside down. Had he been a little quieter than usual? Maybe; it was hard to remember. Unless—there had been a Friday night, surely it had been near the end of June, when he had hung around her desk longer than usual at the end of the day, fiddling with her index cards, driving her crazy. He'd finally asked if she wanted to go and get some dinner, maybe go to a movie. She'd been startled; they often did things together, but dinner-and-a-movie, combined with his nervousness in asking, had almost sounded like a date. Of course, she'd thought, that was just her-he'd never be thinking of it like that-and she'd been both disappointed and a little relieved that she had to say she couldn't, she had plans already. Which was true; Stuart, a lawyer she'd met the week before, was taking her out. He was good-looking and intelligent, and she'd been really excited about it when he'd asked her. Afterwards she'd wished she'd cancelled and gone with Josh, but it hadn't occurred to her in time. For just a second she had thought Josh looked crushed; then he'd smirked and teased her about her gomers, and she'd had to defend herself, so the moment had passed. Yes, it must have been the last weekend in June; it was just a few days later that Josh had announced his plans to spend the Fourth of July weekend in Southampton. She thought again about that look in his eyes, and wondered if he'd found out that day and had been hoping for company. A distraction. A friend. She thought about him going for the surgery by himself, listening to the results by himself, going for the chemo every time by himself, facing whatever side effects he'd had to deal with by himself. She should have been there for him, but he hadn't told her, and she'd been too caught up in her own little world of jealousy and self-protection to figure it out. She would have been angry with him for not telling her, if she weren't so much angrier with herself.

oooooo


	5. Chapter 5

Part 5 of 6

"Josh."

"Yes?"

He didn't look up at her. It was Monday morning. Donna had spent all day and most of the night Sunday trying to think how to do this. His not looking at her was making it even harder than she'd expected.

"Josh, I'm really sorry about what I said on Saturday."

"Don't worry about it."

"Josh, really, I—"

"I said don't worry about it. It's not important. Could you get Greenstein on the phone for me now, please? And then I need those numbers for the education bill."

His voice was cool and remote, the "please" completely uncharacteristic. Donna found the politeness more chilling than anything he might have yelled at her. "I—"

"Now, please."

"Yes, of course." She turned and left the office. She wanted to cry. Instead, she put the call through to Greenstein and started pulling up the numbers for the education bill.

oooooo

"Josh?"

"Yes?"

"You have a call on line 2. A Dr. Garcia-Hamilton."

"Tell her I'm busy."

"She says it's important."

"Tell her I'm busy, please. Then set up a meeting for me with Monroe and Peterson on the Hill. About the education bill. This afternoon if possible."

"Okay."

His tone hadn't changed at all. Donna wanted to cry more than ever. Instead she told Dr. Garcia-Hamilton what Josh had said, and put through calls to Congressmen Monroe and Peterson asking for a meeting.

oooooo

"Josh?"

"Yes?"

"It's Dr. Garcia-Hamilton on the phone again."

"Tell her I'm busy."

"She says it really is very important."

"Just tell her I'm busy, please. I need the education numbers from California and Ohio. And a meeting with Jeffers and Barak for sometime today."

"Okay."

oooooo

"Josh?"

"Yes?"

"Would you like anything to eat?"

"No, thank you."

oooooo

"Josh?"

"Yes?"

"Dr. Garcia-Hamilton again."

"I'm busy."

oooooo

"Josh?"

"Yes?"

"Can I get you some coffee?"

"No, thank you."

oooooo

Donna sat at her desk, wanting to break something. It was almost three weeks since she'd made Josh angry with her. He was still angry with her— or, at any rate, still hadn't forgiven her. She didn't really think he was going to now. He wouldn't look her in the face. He left the cups of coffee she'd started to bring him, unasked, on his desk, untouched. He never spoke to her except to ask for something he needed her to do. His voice was always cool bordering on cold, his manner polite, professional, distant. She found it unbearable. And now she had lost her watch.

She'd been running errands for Josh all morning, and had been up and down the Mall and back and forth between the White House and the OldExecutiveOfficeBuilding. And then she had glanced at her wrist, wondering if she had time to grab a quick lunch, and had realized that her watch had gone. She had searched around her desk and retraced her steps as far as the OEOB, but it was useless, the watch was really gone. And she had loved that watch. It wasn't an expensive one, just a nice designer knock-off, but she'd bought it with the gift certificate Josh had given her for her birthday last year. It was pretty and she'd loved it for itself, but she'd also loved it because it was the closest thing she had to a piece of jewelry given her by Josh. Except for the campaign badge he'd given her the day they met—she still had that and kept it in her top drawer with other special keepsakes, but she couldn't wear it any more, of course. The gift certificate had been to Lord and Taylor's, and Josh had teased her about getting some ridiculous piece of sexy lingerie or her one-hundred-and-twentieth pair of shoes with it, but he'd seemed pleased when she'd shown him the watch. She remembered how his face had lit up and his dimples come out, the warmth in his eyes and voice when he'd told her it looked good on her hand. Compliments from Josh were rare; she treasured them. And now she'd lost Josh's friendship and the goddamn watch too.

It wasn't just his friendship, either. If Toby was right she'd lost more than that, and yet the possibility that Josh had been in love with her and she'd screwed it up seemed almost trivial compared with what she was afraid she might still lose. She was worried sick about Josh, his health, his—she made herself think it—his life, even. He had stayed at work the last two weekends in a row for the first time since the summer—Saturday night, all day Sunday—and he'd been working crazy hours in between, trying to get the big education bill ready to go through Congress. The vote was today. It was an important bill, with provisions that could transform the funding for public schools across the country, providing equalization payments from the federal government to the states that would balance out some of the gross inequities in local school-board budgets. Josh had always been passionate about the issue and was throwing himself into it with everything he had; it seemed almost too big a coincidence to think that his chemotherapy might have come to an end just as he was needing to crank up his time commitment on the bill. There'd been another phone call from Dr. Garcia-Hamilton that morning; Josh had been too busy to take it. She'd called every couple of days for the past three weeks. She always said it was very important. Josh was always too busy to take the call, and it was obvious that he wasn't returning them. After a few of them Donna had done a little research and discovered that Dr. Marilyn Garcia-Hamilton was an oncologist practicing at Georgetown University Hospital. So Josh had stopped going to the hospital on weekends and was blowing off calls from his oncologist. Donna didn't know for sure what all that meant, but she had an idea of what it might mean that terrified her. What ate at her almost as much as the possibility that he might have dropped out of his treatments was the thought that he had done it, not just because of the education bill and its demands on his time, but because of what had happened with her three weeks ago.

She didn't know what to do about it. She wanted to tell Leo, the way she had that Christmas after the shooting, when Josh had been acting so strangely. But every time she started for Leo's office, she remembered Toby's insistence about Josh's need for privacy, and stopped. What if she was wrong about what he was doing? What if she told Leo, and she was wrong, and it just made everything worse for him? She'd misread so many things, got so many things wrong about him lately, she didn't trust herself anymore.

Thinking about it now, she buried her face in her hands and dug her nails into her cheeks, hard. For the first time ever she thought she understood how Josh had felt after the Big Tobacco debacle, in Manchester, maybe even the way he'd felt when he'd broken that window, that terrible Christmas. So angry with yourself. So unforgivably stupid.

Quite deliberately she picked up the coffee mug that sat on her desk and smashed it down on the surface in front of her. Nothing happened. She tried again, harder, and this time it shattered. She looked down at her hand, disappointed; she hadn't cut herself, she was fine. Then she looked at the pieces of the mug, a White House one, and remembered when Josh had given it to her, their first week in office. She burst into tears.

"Donna?" She looked up. Josh was standing in front of her desk, the uncertainty in his voice mirrored in his face. "What's the matter?"

Instead of answering him, she looked back down at the pieces of broken mug on her desk and started playing with them. The tears were still running down her face. She opened one hand and pressed it down against a big piece with sharp-looking edges. It hurt. She pressed a little harder.

"Donna?" His voice cracked. He reached across the desk and grabbed her wrist. "What the hell are you doing?"

She tugged her hand back down, taking him by surprise, and ground her palm against the broken piece of ceramic. He jerked her wrist back up again and turned her hand over. It was bleeding.

"Donna, Donna don't. Stop it. Don't do that. You can't do that. Not you. Not you, Donna. Not ever you." She looked up at him; his eyes were wide and dark with fear. With his other hand he grabbed a kleenex from the box on her desk and wiped at the blood on her palm, checking to see how deep the cuts were. They weren't very. "Talk to me, Donna. What's wrong? Tell me what's wrong."

"I lost my watch. And I broke my mug." Her voice sounded strange and sing-songy, even to her. She tried to pull her hand out of his, but this time he was expecting it, and simply tightened his grip. She was surprised by how strong he still was. His fingers were very thin and felt cold.

"You smashed your mug. On purpose. I saw you."

"Yes. Yes, I did."

"Why, Donna? And why are you trying"—his voice hitched—"to hurt yourself?"

"Why shouldn't I? You do."

He sucked in his breath at that, and dropped to a crouch beside her chair, so his eyes were on a level with hers. "What do you mean? I hurt you? Or—"

"Both. I mean both."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I never meant to—"

"And I told you, I lost my watch," she repeated, cutting him off.

"Your watch?"

"My watch."

"That's nothing to get upset about, Donna. It's just a watch."

"It's not just a watch. It's my watch, and I love it, and I couldn't even look after it properly."

"Lost watches happen, Donna. You can get another one."

"I can't afford another one."

"I'll get it for you, then. I'll get you another watch." He had stopped blotting the palm of her hand and was just holding it now, rubbing the back of it with his thumb. He put his other hand on her shoulder and started rubbing that, too.

"You got me that one; you shouldn't have to go and get me another just because I'm too stupid to take care of it."

"I got you a watch?"

"For my birthday, last year. You gave me a gift certificate; I got it with that."

He smiled, looking as if he was remembering. Then he frowned. "How much did I give you?"

"A hundred dollars; it was very sweet of you. You gave it to me, and I loved it, and I couldn't even look after it properly. I can't look after anything properly. I'm just making a mess of everything." Her voice cracked. The tears were still running down her face.

Josh looked at her and thought he might be going to break down himself. Cheap bastard, he thought; why didn't you get her something good that wouldn't fall off her wrist and make her cry? But he knew she wasn't crying about just the watch. "You haven't made a mess of anything, Donna," he said gently. "Not of anything at all. You never do." He looked at her for a long moment, then smiled a little. "That's my job. Stop trying to take my job, okay? I need it."

She looked up at him and smiled back then. His dimples were showing. He wasn't angry any more.

"Get it? Don't ever do this again. Promise?"

"Okay."

"Promise?" His voice was insistent, and she could see the anxiety still in his eyes.

"I promise."

"Come on, then, let's get you cleaned up. The vote on the education bill is at 4:00, and the President wants us all up in the Residence to celebrate afterwards. I heard Manuel's made his burritos; you know you love them. And there'll be champagne . . ."

oooooo

The party in the Residence was in full swing. Jed had just finished making a little speech about all the hard work and late nights that had gone into getting the education bill passed. He'd said some very nice things about Josh. Josh was pleased, but found that standing to listen was almost more than he could manage; his legs felt like rubber, he was dizzy, and he ached everywhere. He leaned his back against the wall while the President was speaking, and as soon as Jed had finished and waved people towards the buffet he sank down into one of the big armchairs beside the fireplace and closed his eyes. Donna watched him anxiously from across the room. Abbey—who had been in New Hampshire for a month, following several weeks' speaking engagements in Asia—was talking to C.J. and Will, but she too was watching Josh over Will's shoulder. Now she moved next to her husband, who was laughing about something with Leo. Leo saw her and broke into a grin.

"Good to see you, Abbey. You should get down here more often."

"Yes, I should. Leo—"

"It's been too long, Abbey. I know world travel is great, the farm is great, but we need you here, too."

"You certainly do. Leo, Jed, I'm furious with both of you. Why didn't you tell me about Josh?"

"What about Josh, Abbey? He's done a terrific job on the education bill; I've just been telling everyone about it."

"I heard what you said, Jed. I don't mean that. I mean why didn't you tell me he's sick?"

Leo spoke up. "He's had some late nights, Abbey, is all. And a bit of flu a while ago. He just needs a good sleep."

"Flu! Late nights! Are you two really that blind?"

"What are you talking about, Abbey?"

"I don't believe you two. I really don't believe you. The boy is dying on his feet and you're talking about flu and late nights."

Jed and Leo both turned pale. "What are you talking about, Abbey?"

"Jed! Look at him. I may have surrendered my practice, but I still know a very sick man when I see one, and I'm seeing one right now, over in that armchair."

Jed and Leo both turned and stared. Josh had his head back and his eyes closed; he had fallen asleep. The light from the lamp next to the chair was casting the planes of his face into sharp relief, emphasizing the dark shadows around his temples and cheekbones, the bruised-looking marks under his eyes. With his defenses down, they could all see the deep lines furrowing his forehead and drawn around his mouth and eyes by exhaustion and pain. One hand was resting on the arm of the chair; it was so thin that the skin almost seemed to have disappeared, and you could see the blueness of the veins and the shape of the bones.

"He does look ill," Jed murmured. "What on earth is the matter with him?"

"Well, I can't diagnose from a visual alone, but I would say he looks as though he's well into a course of chemotherapy, and having a pretty tough time of it."

"Oh, God," Jed and Leo both said together. "The hair."

"You really are a pair of idiots. Criminal idiots. Late nights? When he needs more rest than usual, not less? More still if he's reacting to the drugs the way I think he is. They're highly toxic chemicals; they attack the whole system, not just the cancer, you know that. We've made a lot of progress with anti-nauseants, but Josh has always been particularly sensitive to drugs and their side effects; I'm guessing he's been having all the classic reactions to chemo, in which case he's half-starved or worse, exhausted, and his gut probably feels like someone's been driving a truckload of bricks into it. Migraines, too, at a guess, and there may be other pain; some of the new drugs do really nasty things to the nervous system for a while. And all that's quite apart from whatever the disease itself might be doing to him."

"He's never said anything. He's supposed to have a new girlfriend, up in New York, that he's been going to see every other weekend."

"Complete idiots. Does he look like a man with a new girlfriend? Where did you get that one from, Leo? Margaret? Who'll have got it from Donna? Idiots!"

"Donna's pretty reliable when it comes to knowing what's going on with Josh, Abbey."

"Donna gets Josh extraordinarily well about ninety percent of the time. The other ten percent she's so far out in left field she isn't even in the ballgame any more."

"She knew when he was having flashbacks to the shooting, when the PTSD was starting up."

"That's because Josh hadn't given her another woman for her to obsess about then."

"What are you saying?"

"Oh, for God's sake! IDIOTS! Josh and Donna have been waltzing around each other for so long they're both dizzy with it; neither one of them can see straight when it comes to the other's love life. All Donna has to do is see Josh talking to a pretty girl and she's got them monogramming towels and picking out china. And he's just as bad about her. In fact, he's probably been deliberately misleading her to get her to think he's seeing someone because he thinks she's seeing someone, or something like that. It's the kind of thing they both do all the time anyway, just to cover themselves in case one of them were to guess how the other one feels. It's exactly the story he'd turn to if he didn't want her to know what he was really doing."

"Well, why the hell wouldn't he want her to know? Or Leo, for that matter, or me? I realize I'm not the most important person he might have informed here; I'm just his boss, I'm just the President—"

"Oh, get off your high horse, Jed. You weren't too eager to tell Josh that you have MS, were you? Or Leo. Or anyone else. I'd have thought you, of all people, would understand."

Jed was quiet then. He looked back at Josh, sleeping in the armchair, and felt older and sadder than he'd ever thought he'd feel. "What do we do now?"

"Well, I suppose the first thing would be to talk to Josh, to try to get him to tell you the details. He doesn't have to, of course, but he probably would if you ask him directly. Or I could try."

"And the next thing?"

"Make the man take some sick leave."

oooooo

A log shifted in the fireplace, then settled with a thump and a crackle of sparks, startling Josh awake. He blinked his eyes, not sure at first where he was. The room seemed empty. "Hello, Josh," Abbey Bartlet said from her perch in the other big armchair by the fire. Her voice was unusually gentle.

"Mrs. Bartlet?" He struggled to sit up.

"Put your head back again, Josh. I want to talk to you, and I don't want you passing out while I do it."

"I'm fine," Josh said automatically, pushing himself more upright in the soft chair.

"Head back, Josh."

"I'm fine, ma'am."

"You're not, you know. You're dizzy from sitting up too quickly and you're thinking you're about to be sick. You can either put your head between your knees or lie back again."

Josh lay back. She was right; his head was spinning, and he wasn't sure what his stomach might do. He really didn't want to throw up in front of the First Lady, in the President's living room, on his chair or his carpet.

"Drink this." Abbey handed him a tall glass with a straw in it. He turned his head sideways and sipped without sitting up. Gingerale, ice-cold, delicious. His head and stomach began to settle down.

"Now," she said, when she could see he was feeling a little better, "tell me why you're in this state."

"I'm fine, ma'am, really. I'm just a little tired; we've been pulling a few late nights to get the education bill through."

"A few late nights haven't made you look like this."

"I had some kind of flu a while ago; I haven't really had a chance to get back up to speed since."

"Josh, you're talking to a doctor."

They sat and looked at each other for a minute. Josh dropped his eyes first.

"Cancer?"

"Yeah."

"What kind?"

"Lymphoma."

"Hodgkin's, or non-Hodgkin's?"

"Non."

"You had surgery?"

"Yeah."

"When?"

"July. The long weekend."

"And came back to work right afterwards."

"Yeah, sure. It was no big deal."

"What were the results?"

"Um, there were some tumors."

"How many?"

"Three, I think. Maybe four. It depends who you talk to; I think it was hard to tell exactly."

"Size?"

"I don't know; bigger than they'd expected, I think."

"Any indication it had spread further?"

"Nothing they can see."

Abbey paused. She didn't really want to ask the next question that occurred to her, so she asked a more innocuous one instead.

"You've been doing chemo ever since?"

"I started about two weeks later, yeah, when the incision had healed up."

"That's pretty soon."

"They thought it would be a good idea to get on with it."

"Where are you going?"

"Georgetown."

"Who's your oncologist?"

"Dr. Garcia-Hamilton, Marilyn Garcia-Hamilton. She's got a pretty good rep, my doctor said."

"Yes, she does. I've heard of her, and it's not my field at all. Well, that's one good thing, anyway."

"Yeah." Josh smiled, looking tired. "She's nice."

"Your hot date?"

He laughed quietly. "You heard about that? She's married."

"But hot?"

"Quite hot, actually."

"Well, that must make things a little pleasanter, anyway."

"Yeah, it does."

"How have you been reacting to the chemo, otherwise?"

"I'm fine."

"Josh."

"I'm fine, really, Mrs. Bartlet."

"That's DR. Bartlet, Josh, and you're not fine."

"I've had some reactions to the drugs."

"Migraines?"

"Yeah."

"Nausea?"

"Yeah."

"Vomiting?"

"Yeah."

"Bad?"

"Pretty bad. It gets better as the week goes on."

"And then they hit you with another dose the next time, right?"

"Right."

"You're on a biweekly cycle, aren't you?"

"Yeah. I go in every other Saturday night. She was really good about trying to work around my schedule."

"And you stay in all day Sundays?"

"Yeah."

"Why? It's usually an out-patient procedure; takes a few hours at the most."

"I get pretty sick the first day; she wanted to monitor me, have me on an IV."

"You've tried the new anti-nauseants?"

"Yeah, pretty much everything. I just keep puking up anyway."

"But your doctor doesn't have you in the hospital on a permanent IV drip, so you must be getting some food down all right."

"I can manage some things."

"Like?"

"Yogurt. Rice pudding, those little ones in plastic cups, you know? Soup sometimes, though it's mostly too salty and sets me off again. Crackers. Plain cheese pizza."

"That's it?"

"That's about it."

"Have you tried marijuana yet?"

Josh flushed and looked away.

"Josh?" A minute passed. "JOSH?"

"Yeah," he said, in a very small voice. "It's the only way I keep most of that stuff down at all."

"Josh, you sound embarrassed."

"Yeah. No kidding. I've just admitted to committing a federal crime."

"Josh, why on earth? It's perfectly legal with a prescription, which I assume you have."

"In New Hampshire, thanks to your husband. In Maine and Vermont and a bunch of other states, including Maryland, where my doctor has an office and writes her prescriptions. I live in the District of Columbia."

"The District passed an initiative legalizing medical marijuana in 1998."

"But D.C. is a federal jurisdiction, not a state. And Congress overruled the initiative when it passed a resolution condemning medical uses of marijuana, also in 1998."

"I thought we'd adjusted that in the last health care bill?"

"We had to drop that clause to get the children's vaccination program in."

"You brokered that one, didn't you?"

Josh shrugged. "The kids' vaccines seemed a little more important. They still do."

Abbey Bartlet sat back in her chair and rubbed her hands over her face. "So if the press gets hold of that—"

"I'll resign, of course. Maybe I should have resigned anyway, but—I really wanted to see the education bill through. Its effects are going to be huge. And it was a close call; we almost didn't get the vote. I just really wanted to do that."

"Josh, Jed would never let you resign over something like this. He'd be furious that you even thought of it."

"Great bit of press I'll make for him if they get hold of it, don't you think? 'Presidential Pothead,' 'White House Staffer Stoned,' 'Deputy Chief of Grass,' 'Josh Lyman, Scoff-Law.'" The bitterness in his voice was unmistakable.

"Josh, over 60% of voters in the District supported legalizing the medical use of marijuana."

"And over three-quarters of the House hissed and booed. Most of them are still around; they're the guys I have to play ball with."

"You won't be playing any ball at all if you can't eat."

"Yeah, I know."

They were both quiet for a minute. Then Abbey spoke again; it sounded as if she were thinking out loud.

"It's medicinal. You need it. Without it, you'd have to be hospitalized. I'm not sure you shouldn't be hospitalized as it is; that's not a very satisfactory diet you've just described, and you're desperately thin. In fact—oh, God, I get it. I'm really almost as big an idiot as you are, and you are, without question, one of the biggest idiots I've ever met, second only to my husband. And Leo McGarry, of course."

"What have I done now, Mrs. Bartlet?"

"You're not using it for every meal, are you? Of course you're not; you're worried enough about using it at home. You really wouldn't want to show up to work stoned in the morning after breakfast, and you sure as hell wouldn't sit in your office downstairs toking up at lunch time."

"Of course I wouldn't! What do you think I—"

"So you're really only eating at night, aren't you Josh? At whatever ungodly hour you get home at night. And if you can call a little bit of yogurt, some rice pudding, or a slice of cheese pizza eating at all. But you won't stop working, you won't take sick leave, so you're starving yourself in order to keep showing up downstairs every morning in a suit and tie to tell my husband how to get his bills through Congress."

"Mrs. Bartlet—"

"Abbey, Josh, for God's sake. Why are you doing it, Josh? Don't you realize that you've got to eat, you've got to keep up your strength if you're going to be able to fight this?"

"I just really wanted to get that bill through, Abbey. Mrs. Bartlet. Ma'am."

There was a very long pause. Josh closed his eyes again. Abbey closed hers for a minute, too, then opened them, and asked the question she'd been putting off for the whole conversation.

"Josh, what did they say the prognosis was?"

"Ma'am?"

"The prognosis, Josh. After your surgery. The recovery rates for this type of cancer, at the stage of development they found. I'm not an oncologist, you know; I don't know that kind of thing off the top of my head."

Josh drew in a deep breath and held it for a minute, before letting it out in a very soft sigh.

"It's a Stage 2 aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The five-year survival rate averages about 60%."

"But for you, Josh? Numbers like that can be pretty misleading; they include a lot of old men. What did your doctor say for you?"

"Well, I should be better than that because of my age."

"That's good."

"But then there's my medical history. The shooting, the chest surgery—my immune system got compromised, and I've never gotten back into the shape I was in before. I'm not all that fit anymore. I have ulcers—"

"Ulcers?"

"Yeah, for a while now. I guess I'm kind of tightly wound a lot of the time, you know?"

"You can say that again."

"So all those things bring the numbers down a bit. And there were more tumors than they were expecting, and they were bigger."

"So?"

"So for me, maybe 50/50, maybe a little worse. 45% chance of making it another five years. Something like that."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

oooooo


	6. Chapter 6

Part 6 of 6

Abbey and Josh sat in silence for a few minutes. Then she unfolded her legs and stood up. "Stay there, Josh. I'll be back in a minute." She left the room and headed for the telephone in her kitchen. Josh closed his eyes again. The warmth from the fire felt good; he was always cold these days. It wasn't long before he was asleep again.

Abbey came back a few minutes later, sat down in the same chair she'd occupied before, and watched him sleep. Such a fine man, she thought. Such a remarkable one. And she knew remarkable men; she was married to one. Josh was different from Jed in many ways, but he was very like him in some. Not quite as intellectually brilliant, to be sure, but brilliant enough. Brash, arrogant at times, thoroughly irritating—Josh, like Jed at his age, had all those qualities in spades; they came with the territory when a man was that intelligent. Josh annoyed the hell out of her more often than not, but there was a boyishness about him that she had always responded to—that grin was irresistible—and a sweetness that tugged at her heart. Mother of three girls, she had always had a soft spot for the boys she'd never had, and Josh had come to seem like a son to her. She knew Jed saw him that way, as did Leo. She sighed; how was it possible for two highly intelligent men to care so much about a younger man and yet be so blind to his quite obvious needs? And Josh wasn't capable of looking after his needs himself; he was entirely too immersed in his job, too devoted to it. To Leo. To Jed. To the whole idea of fixing the world, of making a difference in it.

There was a tap on the door. She got up and opened it; one of the night staff was holding a tray with covered dishes on it. She thanked him, took it, and brought it to the table beside the chair Josh was sleeping in. Then she touched him gently on the shoulder. He sighed without waking, turned his head towards her, and rolled his shoulder closer against her hand, as if human touch was something his body craved. She squeezed his shoulder gently and held her hand there for a minute, then patted him lightly until his eyes opened. "Sit up slowly this time, Josh," she ordered. "Mrs. Bartlet? I'm sorry; I didn't mean to fall asleep again." "You need it. I'm going to make sure you get a lot more sleep very soon, too. But first I want you to eat something."

Josh sat up and shook his head to clear it. "Eat? I don't really think I—" "Yes, Josh, eat. I want you to try. If that crap you described is the sort of thing you keep in your fridge, it's no wonder you haven't been able to keep much down. And skipping meals sucks for your ulcers, as well as for the rest of you. I've had the kitchen send up some of Manuel's matzah-ball soup. It's very low sodium and very delicious; Zoe and I both love it, which is why he always has some in the freezer. If it does come up there's a bowl here, but I think you might be able to manage this."

She had taken the cover off the soup bowl while she was talking. Josh breathed in the scent of his childhood, and reached for it without any more argument. Abbey put the tray on his knees and watched his face when he tasted the soup. He broke into a tired grin. "As good as your mother's?" "As good as my grandmother's, which is really saying something." "Eat it up, Josh. It's what you need." "Penicillin," he said, smiling, and swallowing another spoonful. "What?" "Jewish penicillin, that's what my father always called it." "A lot better-tasting than any penicillin I've ever taken." "Me, either."

He managed to eat the entire bowl of soup and even, after resting for a few minutes, a few bites of the baked custard the kitchen had also sent up. When he finally put his spoon down, there was a touch of color in his face. Abbey was extremely pleased.

"Good plain food. Old-fashioned medicine. Our mothers weren't stupid; this is what you should have been getting all this time. You won't get it in a hospital, more's the pity, and you won't get it in the convenience-foods section of your local Safeway, but you can get it here, and I'm going to make sure you do from now on. There's a whole list of things you can probably keep down without ever having to light up a joint. Not that I have a problem with your doing that, either, when you need to, but it is addictive; the less you depend on it the better. You do need to pay more attention to the quality of what you eat, Josh, though God knows how you're supposed to do that with the hours my husband seems to expect you to put in downstairs. Take-out and fast food is all you've ever had time for."

Josh nodded, stretched, and broke into an enormous yawn. Abbey laughed. "You need plenty of that, too. I'm not going to let you go home tonight, Josh. We have sixteen—can you believe it? sixteen—guestrooms; you can take your pick, but I think you'll be most comfortable in the one we use for Zoe's friends." "I can't stay here, Mrs. Bartlet," Josh started to protest, but she cut him off with a stern look. "You can't do anything else. You're in no state to drive yourself home, and I'm not planning on sending anyone to drive you. I want you here, under my eye, just in case that soup does come up again later. And I'm planning something quite delicious for your breakfast." "I really can't, Mrs. Bartlet; I'm one of the President's staff, not one of your friends." "You're one of our very good friends, Josh; surely you know that by now. In fact, you're more than a friend, you're family. Zoe thinks of you as her big brother, and Jed thinks of you"—her voice was suddenly huskier than usual—"as a son. As do I. And as a son, I'm not giving you a choice here. Can you stand up, or do you need a hand?" Josh was really too tired to object any further. He pushed himself shakily to his feet. She wrapped a steadying arm around his waist, and led the way to Zoe's friends' favorite bedroom.

Josh was all tucked up in the big bed, about to drift off to sleep, when he thought of something. "Where's Donna?" he asked sleepily. Abbey smiled. "I sent her home when the party was over. You can see her tomorrow." "Tha's good," Josh mumbled, and he turned onto his side, wrapped an arm around a pillow, and slipped into a very deep, absolutely dreamless sleep.

oooooo

It was almost noon when a knock on the bedroom door woke him the next day. "Josh? Are you awake?" "Yeahhh," he mumbled groggily, opening his eyes and blinking with surprise at the unfamiliar room. "Really? Are you sure?" The voice sounded amused. It was a familiar voice—very familiar. "Yes, SIR," Josh exclaimed, sitting straight up in bed and running his hands over his face and eyes. At least he didn't have to worry about morning stubble these days.

The door opened silently and the President walked in. He was carrying a tray. "I'm sorry to wake you, Josh, but Abbey didn't want you to go any longer without something to eat." He set the tray down next to Josh on the bed, and sat down himself beside it. "Sir, what are you doing?" Josh asked. He felt completely bemused and utterly embarrassed. He was wearing yesterday's t-shirt and boxers. He was in bed. He hadn't showered since yesterday morning. And he was being waited on by the President of the United States.

"Obeying my wife's orders and bringing you something to eat."

"I—you shouldn't be doing that, Sir."

"What, I shouldn't be obeying my wife? You've got a lot to learn, Josh." He smiled, reached over, and patted Josh's hand. "Don't worry about it, son; I can still carry a tray without breaking something, although God knows the staff around here try their damnedest to keep me from doing anything myself. Abbey has other ideas. And I wanted to talk to you."

"Yes, Sir."

"So start eating, Josh. Abbey isn't going to be too happy with either of us if you don't. And she's already quite thoroughly pissed with the pair of us."

"She is, Sir? Why?" Josh asked, confused. Abbey Bartlet hadn't seemed angry last night; she'd been unexpectedly kind, motherly even.

"She's been talking to your doctor, Josh. Your—oncologist." Jed surprised himself by finding the word hard to get out. He was still coming to terms with what Abbey had told him. "Dr. Garcia-Hamilton isn't at all happy with you, so naturally Abbey isn't either. It seems you haven't been showing up for your treatments. Or returning her calls."

Josh flushed and looked away. "I was going to today. I've just been busy."

"And that's why Abbey's pissed with me. For letting you be that busy. And for not noticing that you shouldn't have been. I'm pretty pissed with myself about that, too, Josh."

"I'm sorry, Sir," Josh said in a very quiet voice, still looking away. "I guess I should have told you."

"Don't apologize, son. I understand why you didn't want to. But Josh—missing your treatments? THAT makes me angry."

"I'm sorry, Sir," Josh said again. They sat for a minute without saying anything. Then Jed said, gently, "It wasn't just about the bill, was it? Because we put some important bills through in September that took a lot of your time, and I gather you managed to fit the chemotherapy in then."

Josh kept his eyes turned down, and fiddled with the edge of the bedspread. "I—no, Sir, it wasn't. Just about the bill. I—I just—it was just—I went through kind of a bad place for a while there, is all, Sir. I'm sorry."

"I don't think you're the one who should be apologizing here, Josh. You've got a lot of friends, you know; people who really care about you, who would find it pretty hard to take if anything happened to you. But we're all so damned busy trying to solve the world's problems that we can't see the ones right in front of our faces, even though they're the ones that matter the most to us."

"Yes, Sir. I know."

They sat quietly again for a minute or two, before Jed said, his voice a little rough with emotion, "Abbey told me what you told her last night. About the numbers, the statistics. She said to remind you that they're only numbers, Josh. There are so many factors that come into play in determining which side of that equation a person ends up on; the medical community is only just beginning to think about, let alone understand, the role played in recovery by the intangible things—a patient's attitude, his state of mind, the support he has from his family, his friends. You've beaten way worse odds than those, Josh. You did it when you were shot. You did it when you took a liberal governor from New Hampshire who was running a hopeless, two-bit campaign and put him in the White House. But you didn't do it alone."

"No, Sir, I never thought I—"

"You didn't do it alone," the President continued without pausing, in a meditative voice. "None of us did it alone. It took Leo, and you, and Toby, and Sam, and C.J., and Hoynes—yes, Hoynes—as well as me to get us here. It took our families. It took the assistants who were with us then—Margaret and Donna—and all the volunteers—it took all of us, working together, to get here, and it takes all of us and all the people who have joined us since to get anything done in any given day. I get the glory, and I take a lot of the blame, but let us never forget that every step forward that we've been able to take in the past six years, every bill passed, every schoolbook paid for by a new program, every child vaccinated or taken to the doctor because her parents don't have to worry about health insurance, every inch of parkland preserved and every drop of newly clean water—every tiny bit of progress we've made has been made by US, not by me alone. The history books will talk about Bartlet's bills and Bartlet's presidency, but it's our bills, our presidency, Josh, yours and mine and Leo's and Toby's and C.J.'s and Sam's. Mrs. Landringham's and Mrs. Federer's presidency. Charlie's and Margaret's and Carol's and Ginger's and Bonnie's and Donna's presidency. I wish I could write that in the books, Josh, I wish I could tell them that there is no President of the United States, there's only a Presidency, and about a thousand people working together to fill that role and do its work. Maybe I will. Maybe that's what I'll write about, when this is over and I'm in my Presidential Library, writing my memoirs—I'll write about you, all of you, and everything you've done to make this country and this world a better place to live in. But I'm going to need you there to help me remember, Josh, so you'd better plan on being with me. We all need you to be there; we need you with us. And you need us. You can't do this alone, Josh, and you don't have to. So stop trying to, and let us help you. And you'd better start by eating some of that breakfast Abbey had the kitchen send up; she's going to skin me alive if that tray isn't a lot lighter by the time it goes back downstairs again."

Josh grinned a little at that. "I'll try, Sir."

"All of it?"

"All of this food, Sir? I doubt I can manage—"

"All of what I just said, Josh."

"Yes, Sir. I'll try."

"You'll call your doctor and start the treatments again?"

"Yes, Sir. I'll call her today."

"Good. There's another thing; Abbey wants you to move in here for a while."

"I couldn't possibly, Sir!"

"I'd like you to too. Think about it, Josh. If you're more comfortable in your own home, of course, I'm not going to force you. And we can pay for whatever help you need in your own home, if you'd rather. But we'd like to have you here."

"Sir, I—"

"Just think about it, Josh, okay? Either way, you're going to be getting your meals from our kitchen; Abbey wants to know that you're getting food that's good for you that you can actually eat. I'd kind of like to know that myself. If you decide you'd rather be in your own place, we'll send your meals over to you."

"Sir, I—"

"I'm not taking any argument on that one, Josh. Oh, and you're officially on sick leave, as of today. So don't even think about coming into the office."

"Yes, Sir."

oooooo

A couple of hours later, Josh walked slowly up Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown. It was a beautiful afternoon; the sky was that deep, clear blue one only seems to see in the fall, and the autumn foliage was at its peak. The sun was almost hot, and although he felt no inclination to take his jacket off the way most of the people around him had, he was enjoying the warmth on his face. He felt better than he had in ages: still slow and weak, but without that dragging feeling of nausea and exhaustion. Even the ever-present headache had subsided to a comparatively gentle background noise. He knew the feeling wasn't going to last, but he definitely wanted to appreciate it while he could.

He was still trying to sort out the thoughts and emotions that had been hurling themselves at him for the past twenty-four hours. He felt like a different person from the one who had woken up after two hours' sleep and dragged himself to the office yesterday morning. That man had been at the end of his rope: exhausted, empty, sick, and sick of himself. He hadn't just been ready to quit; he'd already done it. The thought he'd been most aware of had been a dull curiosity about how much longer he was going to have to endure the farce of getting through the day. The only thing he'd cared about had been getting the education bill passed. He'd figured it might be the last thing he'd accomplish and he'd cared desperately about getting it done, but he hadn't been able to find any joy in doing it at all.

And then he had stepped out of his office and seen Donna smashing her coffee mug, seen the tears running down her face, and it was as if someone had flipped a switch somewhere inside him and all the feelings had come rushing back. Not necessarily pleasant feelings; he'd been distressed that she was crying, horrified that she wanted to hurt herself, frightened half to death. But along with those painful emotions he'd been aware of a deep sense of relief: he did care about something, about someone; he hadn't entirely forgotten how. And when he'd been able to comfort her—when he'd seen her respond to his words and his touch—he'd felt a warmth and a delight that he'd stopped expecting for himself.

Those feelings were still with him, and they were mixed with other emotions that surprised him as well. Relief at not having to hide anything any more. Gratitude for the love and caring that the Bartlets had shown him. Physical comfort at having eaten and slept well. And a shocking hopefulness, not so much about his chances for the future—he was still unwilling to invest too much in that—as simply for the day. He was actually looking forward to the next few hours. He had a plan, and he was going to enjoy carrying it out.

The plan involved shopping, something Josh normally detested. It amused him to find himself so excited by the prospect of a shopping expedition. He ordinarily had little interest in buying things for himself—his new watch had been a spur-of-the-moment purchase, and the satisfaction it had given him had taken him genuinely by surprise—while the prospect of having to buy gifts for other people always sent him into a panic. It was a task he farmed out to Donna whenever possible. But today, on this brilliant fall afternoon, he was going shopping for a present, and he couldn't think of anything he'd rather be doing.

And here was the shop now, just a few blocks from his townhouse. You could tell from a glance into the bay windows that it was one of those exclusive little stores Georgetown harbored, tucked in among the hip restaurants and the funky, transient boutiques—places that had been there forever, catering to Washington's rich and powerful elite. Josh certainly belonged to the powerful elite, but he never felt the need to buy things to prove it. He wasn't rich, exactly, but he was a long ways from poor, either; his father had left him some money, and his government salary, though a small fraction of what he could have been making privately as a consultant, was a lot more than he ever spent on himself. It would never have occurred to him normally to go anywhere near a shop like this. Yet here he was, going into this one for the second time in so many months. He felt a quickening of excitement as he climbed the brick stairs to the elegant colonial door. He knew exactly what he wanted, and he had no doubt that he was going to be able to find it here.

oooooo

About an hour later Josh left the shop and started to make his way back down Wisconsin. He was getting tired now, and stopped for a breather at a coffeeshop. The little tables under the green awning were full, so he stood just outside the awning in the sun, leaning his back against the brick wall. The sky was, if possible, an even deeper shade of blue than before; the trees along the Avenue seemed to be showing off every possible shade of gold. Looking up into the branches closest to him, he was captivated by the beauty of the shimmering leaves against the azure sky. Pure light, he thought. He couldn't really find any other words to express what they made him feel; it was the same way he was sometimes left speechless when a shaft of sunlight or the cone of light from a desk lamp illuminated Donna's hair. Looking back down from the trees for a minute, he was somehow not at all surprised to see Donna herself actually walking down the street towards him, her arms full of parcels. Why not? She hadn't had an afternoon off in weeks. Of course she would take advantage of her newly free time by having lunch out and going shopping in Georgetown.

He watched her as she came nearer. Her attention was focused on a pair of small boys being pushed in an enormous stroller; they were beaming at her, and she was beaming back at them. He thought he'd never seen anything more beautiful than that smile; it lit up her face more brilliantly than the sunlight lit up the leaves or her hair.

"Hey, Donna," he said, when she was close enough to hear him. She turned towards his voice and stopped, looking surprised.

"Hey, Josh. What are you doing, holding up the wall?"

He smiled, almost shyly. "Just resting. And—looking."

"At what?" She turned around to see what he could have been looking at.

"At the leaves."

"They're beautiful, aren't they? All those shades of yellow, against that blue sky. I love this time of year."

"Yeah. Yeah, they're—amazing. I was just standing here thinking—you wouldn't think they were dying, would you? They're so—full of light."

His voice was quiet, easy, but Donna felt her stomach turn over, her throat constrict. She had to turn her head away a little so he couldn't see her face. It was a minute before she could answer him. "Yes, they are." They stood there together quietly for another minute or two, looking at the trees, before she added, "Only they're not. Not dying. The trees, I mean."

"The leaves are, though," he said, sounding just a little sad.

It took everything she had to keep her own voice steady, her tone light. "But they grow back again. They're not the tree itself; they're just part of it that comes and goes. Like—like hair. The trees are just—shedding."

"Shedding? Like a dog?"

"Yeah, like a big, furry, smelly dog. But it all grows back again. The fur, and the leaves."

"A big, furry, smelly dog? Donnatella Moss, you are suffering from a serious deficit of poetry in your life. It's a good thing you don't have to write speeches; you'd lose us a lot of points on the inspiration thing." But he was laughing, teasing her. Donna caught her breath.

"A big, furry, smelly, drooly dog," she answered, firmly.

"Well, I really needed that image to go with my beautiful trees," he moaned. And then he grinned, flashing his dimples. "Want to get some coffee?"

"Of course."

"We could drink it out here. I don't want to be inside; it's too nice a day."

He opened the door and steered her inside, dropping his hand on the small of her back the way he so often did. At the counter he insisted on paying for both of them. They took their coffees back outside and sat at one of the little tables that had opened up under the green awning. Donna noticed that Josh ordered a decaf latte, when he normally took his coffee strong and black, and that he hardly touched it. They sat for a few minutes in a companionable silence, Donna sipping her drink, Josh cradling his in his hands, both of them looking at the light pouring through the canopy of golden leaves overhead. Then, quite suddenly, Josh reached across the table and put his hand over hers. "I'm sorry I've been such a jerk the last few weeks, Donna. And I'm sorry, really sorry, about the way I acted—that day. About what I said. You didn't deserve that."

Donna stared at him, her mouth actually dropping open a little in disbelief. She couldn't seem to find her voice. He kept talking, quietly. "I was having a bad day. A few bad days, actually. But that's no excuse for taking things out on—"

"Josh!" she interrupted him, finally managing to get her vocal chords to work. "Josh, stop it. I can't believe you're apologizing to me."

"I want to," he said simply. His hand was still resting over hers. She noticed again how cold his skin felt, even though he'd been holding the warm coffee.

"No," she said. "No. I'm the one who should be apologizing here. What I said to you was awful. I don't blame you for having been angry about it; I wouldn't have blamed you if you'd never wanted to talk to me again."

"I could never do that, Donna," he said, wrapping his fingers around hers now and squeezing a little. "I couldn't. I know you didn't mean that the way it came out. I knew it at the time, really, or I would have known it if I'd stopped to think instead of just reacting. And, Donna—I didn't mean what I said either. Never. I could never mean that I didn't want you to be my friend. You're the best friend I have, Donna; the best friend I've ever had. I couldn't—I'm really sorry I said that."

"Not as sorry as I am that I said the things I did, Josh," Donna said, her voice starting to choke up with tears. She stopped and blinked, not wanting actually to cry in public. He was squeezing her hand tightly now.

"Don't, Donna. Don't," he said. "It doesn't matter."

And then he reached across the table, took the coffee cup out of her other hand, set it down, and folded both her hands together in both of his. "Donna," he said, "there's so many things I need to talk to you about, so much I want to say to you, but right now—" She looked up, and was surprised to see that he was blinking too, his eyes suspiciously bright. He was also smiling at her. "Right now, I just want you to know I didn't mean that and I never could. And I want to give you this." He took one hand off hers, reached into his pocket, and slipped something under her fingers on the table. She stared at him, and then down at the little package in her hands. It was a long, narrow box wrapped in heavy, expensive-looking paper tied with wide, expensive-looking ribbon. She looked back up at him, questioningly, and he nodded, still smiling, but looking nervous, too. "Go on. Open it. Please."

Her fingers trembled as she worked at the paper. Inside was a box with the name of a well-known Georgetown jewelers stamped on its elegant top. Donna thought her heart had stopped. She had trouble shaking the lid off, and Josh laughed a little as she struggled before it came away. When she saw what was nestled inside, she gasped. All the color drained out of her face, and then flushed back in again, leaving her pink and breathless. "Josh! Joshua Lyman, are you insane?"

It was a watch, of course. A watch not unlike the one she had lost and cried about the day before; the face was the same shape and color, the band the same general style. But there all similarity to the lost watch ended; even without a glance at the name written in tiny, discreet letters on the face, one could tell that this was a watch from a different league altogether. It was heavy, elegant, beautiful, and obviously very expensive. It was, in fact, the same make as the watch Josh had been wearing for the past month or so, the watch she had thought he must have been given by a rich girlfriend he'd met in the Hamptons.

"No," he said simply, and looking at him she could see embarrassment and pleasure and something else—was it anxiety?—all playing in his face at the same time. "No, I just—I hope you like it." His voice was husky. "I can take it back and swap it for something different if you don't."

"Like it? It's—it's beautiful. It's gorgeous. Of course I like it; I love it. But Josh, it must have cost a fortune. You've gone completely out of your mind."

"No, I haven't," he said again, sounding stubborn. "I've always wanted to give you something decent. I'm sick of waiting to do it."

She looked him in the eyes for a long minute, then looked down at the watch again, and back at him. Then she pushed her chair back, stood up, and stepped around the table. He stood up too, rather shakily, for the hug he thought was coming. But Donna didn't go for the hug. Instead she took his face in her hands and looked, almost sternly, into his eyes. "Joshua Lyman," she said firmly, "you are a beautiful man. A beautiful man. And I love you." And then she pressed her lips fiercely to his, and he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight against him, and they stayed that way for a very long time, kissing each other under the green awning with the mermaid on it, entirely oblivious to the fact that half Washington was strolling past them on the sidewalk.

oooooo

Later that night, lying in bed with Donna's hair spread out over his chest, Josh let his thought wander back over bits and pieces of the day. There had been his conversation with Marilyn Garcia-Hamilton, in which she'd given him hell, reminding him in no uncertain terms that chemotherapy wasn't something you could just play around with. She'd ended on a more hopeful note, though, by saying that there were still a number of options available that they could discuss. He'd made an appointment to see her on Monday. There had been the salesman in the jewelers, the same Eastern European man he'd bought his own watch from; he had laughed a little at seeing Josh again so soon, and had said, in his heavy accent, "So, you want to buy time again, Mr. Lyman?" And of course there had been Donna: Donna kissing him wildly outside the Starbucks on Wisconsin Avenue; Donna sitting beside him on the sofa in his living room, her arm wrapped around him and her head on his shoulder while he tried to explain everything; Donna sweeping away all his fears and protests with her passionate insistence that he take her to bed. He smiled a little wryly, thinking about it now; he could hardly have been her ideal lover, with his bald and wasted body, but she had been quite convincing about wanting him anyway. He hoped she hadn't just been taking pity on him. She'd been almost angry when he'd voiced that fear, and in a way he understood; he couldn't imagine Donna in a condition he wouldn't want to make love to. It was just hard to believe she might really feel the same way about him.

And he remembered standing outside Starbucks, looking up into the trees and their leaves. He didn't believe in a traditional God; he hadn't been able to wrap his mind around that idea since he'd first learned about the Holocaust and had realized what had happened to his family. His sister had died about the same time. But today he had been flooded with a sense of being part of something larger than himself, something good. He couldn't really put it into words. It had to do with the way he'd felt when he'd broken through that protective distance he'd wrapped around himself and had been able to comfort Donna the day before; with the way Mrs. Bartlet had brought him matzah-ball soup and the President had carried a tray into his bedroom and talked about his being a part of the Presidency; with the way the light had poured through those trees outside the coffeeshop, turning every leaf to pure gold. He remembered what that had made him think of, what Donna had said. Tree, or leaf? he wondered. Which was he? He didn't really know. He just knew he was tired of the darkness—the anger, the hopelessness, the fear. He wanted to be like the trees. Or the leaves. Whichever—it almost didn't matter. He just wanted that brightness, and the strange thing was, that even before he'd fully realized what he wanted, he had it. He felt peaceful, untroubled. Happy, even. Full of light.

He looked down at Donna's hand, which was wrapped in his, resting on her chest. She was still wearing the watch he'd given her; she'd refused to take it off. He thought again about the little European man in the jewelry store, and smiled. Yes, he wanted to buy time again. Whatever it cost him, it would be worth it. He was going to buy all the time he could get.

The End


End file.
